Nice move, Epic. The game studio that develops one of the most used middleware engines, Unreal Engine, has decided to make their latest release, Unreal Engine 4, free. That’s right, the engine is free and all updates will be free. Developers making commercially-released software will pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue that is higher than $3,000 per project and per quarter, though developers can still negotiate the fee with Epic. This opens up the middleware to any developer who wants it, no matter how small the project. In fact, if your product doesn’t make much money (or is free), you basically don’t pay royalties. This is going to be great for the indie market and will hopefully lead to some cool ideas.